35 Reflections on the New Year. of eternal rest and security, beguile his tedious hours, and sweeten his moments of anxiety and sorrow. Is it not delightful, therefore, for the Christian to review his past mercies, his past deliverances? Will he not be constrained, after having experienced the fulfilment of engagements on the part of his Lord, to trust him for the future? at the same time, disclaiming all ideas of his own strength and ability to effect deliverance, he will exclaim, "God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in every time of need; he is my rock and my salvation, and there is no unrighteousness in him." But if it be necessary for the Christian to pause and reflect, how much more so is it for that man who is a stranger to himself, a rebel against his Maker, and a violator of every holy precept; who is living without hope, and without God, in the world? He is a traveller; but where is he going? Does he expect to enter the celestial city? Does he anticipate an unfading crown, or starry diadem? Has he in prospect the white robes, the unsullied vestments, the victor's chaplets? Ah, no; nothing which defileth, nothing polluted, shall enter the regions of unsullied purity: the inhabitants of that place, where bliss is consummated, and felicity perpetual, have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; they have waged a triumphant warfare, and have obtained a complete and decisive victory. Sees he not yon yawning precipice? Hears he not the voice of his incensed Judge? Feels he not the pangs of an inward monitor? Ah, no; he is unmoved, although hanging over the tremendous abyss of eternal despair. The declarations of Deity, supported by evidence the most convincing and unquestionable, are sounded in his ears, yet he remains hardened and impenitent; he continues deaf to the solicitations of heaven; he will not listen to the sweet accents of mercy; he will not look to that Saviour who expired for guilty rebels upon Mount Calvary; he says, peace, peace, when there is no peace; he deliberately resolves upon his own ruin and perdition. He also is a mariner; but whither is he sailing? Is he bound to the port of safety, to the haven of security? When storms and tempests arise and threaten 36 to overwhelm his bark, has he a harbour to which he can retreat? Has he a friend, who can calm the boisterous winds and angry waves? Can he call to his assistance a heavenly pilot? Ah, no. He has no deliverer, no steersman, and yet he is sailing upon an ocean so dangerous and unnavigable, as to threaten him with immediate destruction. When we have entered upon a new scene of time; when another year has rolled over our heads; how necessary is it to inquire, How have I spent the past year? Have I dedicated the faculties of my mind, and the powers of my body, to the promotion of the honour and glory of that God, to whom I have sworn allegiance? Have I lived for him, who loved me and gave himself a sacrifice for me? Or have I been acting as a traitor, and violating my oath of fidelity? And since I have had talents committed to my charge, and privileges of a superior kind conferred upon me; have I improved or misimproved those talents and privileges? I have experienced many signal deliverances, both of a temporal and spiritual nature; and I have had many a friendly warning and kind admonition with regard to the brevity and vanity of human life and human affairs; I have experienced a disjunc tion of ties the most sweet and endearing; I have felt sorrows the most heartrending and painful; I have enjoyed prosperity and adversity. What effect have these produced upon my mind? Have they hardened or softened my soul? Have they assimilated me to the likeness of my Saviour, or debased me to the image of a demon? Have they produced humility, resignation, and meekness, or pride, murmurs, and discontent? Have I, under all my distresses, and trials, and temptations, fled to the refuge set before me in the gospel; or have I trusted in an arm of flesh, and vainly hoped to rescue and deliver myself? Have I cast away all self-righteousness, and reposed with confidence upon that grace which is omnipotent, and sufficient for every emergency? or am I still going about to establish a righteousness of my own, not submitting myself to the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ? These queries are suitable for the Christian; but oh! what has that man to say, who is living at a distance from the Majesty of heaven, spurning his 37 Remarkable Preservation. 38 counsels, despising his reproofs, and | tial, but after all our endeavours it is vainly contending with his Maker? Another period of time has passed over him, but he has no inquiries to make with regard to the concerns of his immortal soul: his inquiries are, "What shall I eat? What shall I drink? Wherewithal shall I be clothed? How shall I gratify my sensual appetites? How shall I obtain riches, honours, and the applause of the world? His desires are of the earth, earthy; they are vain, sensual, and devilish; his wishes are bounded by the narrow limits of time, they relate merely to the concerns of the body, the brutal part, which must soon perish and decay; he has no taste for that intellectual enjoyment, those refined pleasures, which flow from communion with God; his grovelling affections soar not to that world, where all enjoyment springing from a pure source is unsullied and refined. The grave terminates his hopes; it terminates his joys; but it is the commencement of his sorrows. His spirit returns to God who gave it; and then he hears the awful sentence, a sentence big with horror and dismay-" Depart, thou cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels;" prepared for those who have dared to call in question my sovereignty; to impugn my wisdom, to despise my threats, and raise the puny arm of rebellion against me. If any man of this description should read these pages, I would entreat him, if he has any regard for his eternal happiness; if he has any regard for his immortal soul; if he wishes to avoid eternal misery, and hopes for eternal enjoyment; to be reconciled to God, through the mediation and atonement of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Mercy is now proffered; the invitation is, "Come without money and without price: wherefore spend ye your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. Time is short; our hours are rolling away; we are hastening to that state where every thing is immutable; where our destinies will be for ever fixed: this life is, as it were, a dream; we would fain make it something substan but vanity and vexation of spirit; but in eternity, every thing is substantial and permanent. "O that men were wise, that they would consider these things!" that they would not attach an undue importance to things tempotary and uncertain, to the neglect of those things which are satisfying in their nature, and eternal in their duration. That the Lord, the Holy Spirit, would grant those who read this, and who are far from happiness, peace, and salvation, repentance to the saving of their souls, is the earnest wish and prayer of MEDICUS. REMARKABLE PRESERVATION. ELEANORA Lumley, the infant daughter of Mr. J. Lumley, aged four years, residing at No. 33, Wellclose Square, London, on the evening of Sunday the 24th of September, 1820, was left in bed asleep by her mother, on the first floor, while she attended public worship, at a chapel in the neighbourhood. The father, left in charge, retired to an apartment below, attentively listening to the awaking of his child. At the expiration of about half an hour, he heard faint cries, apparently proceeding from above. Concluding his child was awake, yet, from his defective hearing, half doubting the fact, he cautiously ascended the stairs, to prevent (if deceived) awaking her. Upon his entering the room usually allotted for her repose, and eagerly looking into the bed, no child was there. The thought of the moment suggested to him, that she was in the adjoining room. There too he searched, with the same disappointment. The agony of mind experienced by him in those trying moments, is to be felt by a parent only in like circumstances. Still he heard, or thought he heard, the cries of his child. Breathless, he descended the stairs into the passage below, listening at every step, and sinking with dreadful forebodings, through the agitation of his mind. Having searched the parlour and kitchen through, almost without hope, he opened the yard door, when, to his great surprise, he beheld his lost child sitting in an upright posture on the flag stones, endeavouring to raise herself up. 39 On the Salvation of the Heathen. The first question was, how she came there? Her father not suspecting the miraculous escape his daughter had experienced, she sobbed out, "Me was frighten'd, father, and jumped out of the window." In truth, though scarcely to be credited, she had sprung from the back window of the first floor, into the yard below, a height of nearly eighteen feet; the ground having been excavated to give light to kitchens below. The first consideration was, to search for broken bones, bruises, &c. But, after a minute inspection, both by himself and a surgeon, it was ascertained that no hurt was occasioned by the fall, at least there was no outward appearance of any, save a slight scratch down the middle of the back, which it was supposed had been received by her springing against a projecting wall, and which perhaps in some degree broke the violence of the fall. The child underwent the restrictions recommended by the medical attendant, of repose, &c. and after three days was perfectly recovered. On the Salvation of the Heathen. MR. EDITOR, 40 SIR,-When an opinion is industriously propagated, which is derogatory to the Honour, and Mercy, and Goodness, and Veracity, of the Divine Being, it is the duty of every man, who considers it as having this tendency, to lift up his voice against it, and justify the ways of God to man." It is in this point of view that I consider the opinion, which I have ventured to controvert, in the No. for September, column 701, of your excellent Magazine. I have already said, "Either the Heathens are moral agents, (independent of revelation) or they are not." Let us try to prove this a little more at large. 1st. The great JEHOVAH is a being in whom infinite intelligence, moral excellence, and efficiency, concentrate; and we are told (Gen. i, 27.) that man was "created in his image;" therefore man must also possess finite intelligence, a limited moral capacity, and confined efficiency. cient, though they possess the capacity for these, as it respects their minds. This is the case with infants, idiots, and the diseased, and they are not accountable for a moral capacity, which cannot, in the nature of things. be exerted. The Heathens then, who are not infants, idiots, or diseased, must be accountable for the exercise of their moral capacity. The imminent danger from which 2. The soul of man is the substance the child thus escaped, arose out of the too prevalent customs of alarming in which these attributes or properties children with idle tales of old men, inhere, and the body is but the vehicle boogaboes, &c. Such folly cannot be of his mind; yet if the body be so too severely reprehended. That mo- circumstanced that it cannot perform thers will accustom themselves, or its part in the process of intelligence, suffer those entrusted with the care of &c. such persons cannot be denomitheir offspring, to frighten them intonated intelligent, moral agents, or effia temporary and agitated repose, is deeply to be lamented. The little innocent indeed, through fear, appears to sleep; its eyes are shut; and perhaps, by dint of persevering alarms, may at last fall into a slumber, but is it the sleep of repose and rest?' does it refresh and invigorate its tender frame? Alas, no! Mark its convulsive movements: dreams agitate its little mind; it starts in agony; it sobs, and at last awakes in affright, though not invariably like the child in question, who, it appears, had, from the same cause, and through the strongest fear, contrived to throw itself from the window-yet always leaving the same effects, a constant dread and intimidation through life, not unfrequently such as imbitter a great portion of our valuable time, leaving us a prey to diseases, beyond the art of medicine, and the skill of experience, to W. H. cure. Bermondsey-Square, Nov. 1st. 3. If the Heathens are not moral gospel agents, independent of the " read or preached," they must then be necessary agents, until we are good enough to send them it, and if so, their actions, &c. can have no moral evil in them, consequently they can be no bar to their salvation. 4th. If the "gospel read or preached" communicates moral agency to those who hear it, the "gospel read or preached," must be itself a moral agent, or, if not, how can it communicate what it does not possess? 5th. There is an eternal distinction 41 Biographical Sketch of Mr. Roscoe. 42 between good and evil, independent | future rewards and punishments. Now, of all law, or there is not :-If there is such a distinction, then no finite unnecessitated moral being can possibly exist, without being capable of BOTH; and, (unless his Creator shall please to give him a written LAW, more distinctly to mark the boundaries of good and evil,) the consciousness of this capacity will be his LAW. Is not this what St. Paul means, when he says, "These, having not the law, are a law unto themselves?" Rom. ii. 14. But if such beings exist without any law at all, then they may do what evil they please, without being punishable for their erimes, and this would introduce disorder and confusion into the universe. But, on the other hand, if there is not an eternal distinction between good and evil, then it will be impossible to prove that God is eternally good; and indeed upon this supposition, he can neither be good nor evil; and how any such things as good and evil could ever have existed, I am at a loss to conceive. THE ETERNAL GOODNESS OF GOD, therefore, is a sure proof that there is aneverlasting difference between good, and its opposite, evil; and this eternal difference is as sure a proof of the moral agency of man, independently of revelation. Having thus proved that the moral agency of man is independent of revelation, it is upon this immutable basis that his salvability, or capability of salvation, principally rests. when we consider that the "gospel read or preached," is "indispensably necessary" (not to their salvation, but) to give the Heathens proper views of these subjects, and to direct their moral agency, in order that they may obtain an incomparably greater degree of happiness and holiness in this world, and a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory in the next, every nerve should be stretched, every purse should be opened, and every heart should pray, that the honour of the Redeemer's name, and "his dominion, may be from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." J. SMITH. Hutton Rudby, Nov. 9, 1820. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE history of the Author of the Life siduous industry, superadded to the rapidity of genius. Favoured by no advantages of education, fostered by no patronage, raised by the native energies of his mind alone, Mr. Roscoe has reached a pitch of literary eminence, which is rarely attained even by those who have made the best use of the privileges of academic instruction. His parents moved in the humbler sphere of life; they were, of course, To the reasonings that I have adopt- precluded by their circumstances from ed, it will be objected, that" they will giving their son a very extensive eduhave a tendency to paralyze public cation; and, with a strange perverseefforts in the cause of missions to the ness of temper, he himself obstinately Heathen." Ans. This is the same ob- refused to attend at the day-school jection that was raised against St. where his father wished him to be Paul's reasonings on the same sub-taught writing and arithmetic. In ject: "What advantage then hath the consequence of this untoward event, Jew, or what profit is there of circum- he did not enjoy even the common opcision? Much every way: chiefly, be-portunities of acquiring knowledge, cause that unto them were committed the oracles of God." See Rom. iii. 1,2. usually possessed by those of the same station in life as himself. He was thus fated to be the architect of his own fame. Now the advantages of revelation are manifest, viz.-1. It shows the But though he threw off the tramboundaries of right and wrong; the mels of the school, he was not idle :excellence of the one, and the exceed-be read much, and thought more. ing sinfulness of the other. 2. Revelation alone, assures us of pardon upon proper grounds, the blood of Christ. 3d. It brings "life and immortality to light," 1 Tim, i. 10. 4. It instructs those who receive it in the nature of No. 23.-Vol. III. At an early age he was articled as clerk in the office of Mr. Eyes, an attorney, in Liverpool. Soon after this period, he was stimulated to undertake the study of the Latin language, by one of his companions boasting D 43 Biographical Sketch of Mr. Roscoe. About this time he commenced an acquaintance with the late Dr. Enfield, and the present Dr. Aikin, both of whom were then residents at Warrington, the former being tutor in the belles lettres in the academy there, and the latter established as a surgeon that he had read Cicero de Amicitia, and speaking in high terms of the elegance of the style and sentiments of that celebrated composition. Mr. Roscoe immediately procured the treatise in question; and smoothing his difficulties by perpetual reference to his grammar, as well as to his dic-in that town. These gentlemen were tionary, he drudged through the task which emulation had incited him to undertake. The success experienced in his first effort prompted him to proceed; and he did not stop in his career till he had read the most distinguished of the Roman classics. In this pursuit he was encouraged by the friendly intercourse of Mr. Francis Holden, an eccentric but excellent scholar. Having made considerable progress in the Latin language, Mr. Roscoe, still without the assistance of a master, proceeded to the study of French and Italian. The best authors in each of these tongues soon became familiar to | him; and it is supposed, that few natives of the country possess so general and recondite a knowledge of Italian literature, as the subject of the present memoir. During the whole of this period, Mr. Roscoe regularly attended at the office: his seasons of study were the intervals of business. early sensible of his surprising talents, and they contracted with him a friendship which was sure to be lasting, as it was built on the solid basis of mutual esteem. Mr. Roscoe seems to have been early gifted with a correct taste in the arts of painting and statuary. On the 17th of December, 1773, he recited before the Society formed in Liverpool for the encouragement of designing, drawing, painting, &c. an Ode, which was afterwards published, together with his poem entitled Mount Pleasant. Of this Society he was a very active member, and occasionally gave public lectures on subjects appropriate to the object of the institution. When the voice of humanity was raised against the slave-trade, Mr. Roscoe, fearless of the inconvenience to which the circumstances of his local situation might expose him, stood forth a zealous and enlightened advocate for the abolition of that inhuman traffic. In his boyish days, indeed, he had expressed his feelings on this subject, in the following charming lines, which are extracted from the poem already alluded to, page 40;— His attachment to the muse was of a very early date. While yet a boy, he read with avidity the works of the best English poets. Of their beauties he had an exquisite sense; and it may casily be imagined that the first of his compositions was of the poeti-There Afric's swarthy sons their toils repeat, cal class. "Mount Pleasant," a de- Beneath the fervours of the noon-tide heat; scriptive poem, which he wrote in his Torn from each joy that crown'd their native sixteenth year, is a record not only of soil, the fertility of his genius, but of the correctness of his taste. torn; From morn to eve, by rigorous hands opprest, Soon after the expiration of his clerkship, Mr. Roscoe was taken into partnership by Mr. Aspinwall, a very respectable attorney of the town of Liverpool; and the entire management of an office, extensive in practice, and high in reputation, devolved upon him alone. In this situation he conducted himself in such a Shame to mankind! but shame to Britons most, manner as to gain universal respect: Who all the sweets of liberty can boast, for, notwithstanding his various pur-Yet, deaf to every human claim, deny suits, he paid strict attention to his profession, and acquired a liberal and minute knowledge of law. In short, in clearness of comprehension, and rapidity of dispatch, he had few equals. | That bliss to others which themselves enjoy; lume of the Speaker, Mr. R. furnished him * When Dr. E. published the second vowith an Elegy to Pity, and an Ode to Education. |